Why





Dissociative mornings;
Taurean curls
Slow rapt- tepid chilled
sweet air, the
sun rags at tiny rays
      through torn screens
of very old warmth
just now hitting my
        woke skin

My daily agenda is
   mapped out
    on sour smelling library
cards from all the
discarded books collected
      ages ago disowned from
their dusty shelves

The stain from a warm cup
now imbedded in rings on
all of my belongings
Gold amber turned seafoam
green- jilted in an artist’s
oblivion to catch the detail
in anything but overlook
everything else.

I'm a Bad Person

i want to love her, but i wont
“i’m yours” she tells me
while i grab her throat

i’m not sure if she means it
but i sure hope she doesn’t
she doesn’t know how she’ll get treated
or that i cannot be trusted 

i came for her body
but i’ll stay for her heart
and ill let her down softly
when we start to drift apart

this is a poem from my head but my heart wrote it

no,
i won’t sugar coat it
this is a poem from my head
but my heart wrote it

& it’s a bitch
trying to get to the bar
when you spent all your money
on liquor instead of
the loan on your car

yeah,
but that’s real life though
see i never thought
that i’d be this broke
never could imagine
all my cash going
up in booze
& smoke

no,
i won’t sugar coat it
this is a poem from my head
but my heart wrote it

Forever more (Poem by Rakuli)

 

               ^         ^                                        ^      ^
               ^^     ^^                               ^      ^^   ^^
        ^     ^ ^   ^ ^                           ^    ^    ^ ^ ^ ^
        ^^   ^^^ ^^^                           ^       ^  ^^ ^^^^^
         ^^  Will  you                            ^^   ^  ^^ ^^^^^
      ^ ^^ halt your                             ^^  ^^^life  for
        ^ ^^ one  tiny                            ^ ^ moment to
        ^^think about                            and reflect on
        what our  words                          have done to
       the innocent dark                       birds of  the
        world. Blackbirds,                    ravens  and
          crows are painted                 as the crux
             of evil, harbingers           of doom. It
               isn’t because they     live on meat
                   opportunistically  scavenged, a
                        man is as likely to be guilty                  __
                          of that sin.     They  are  not       icons    \
                           of murder because they hunt, killing the ) 
                               smaller, weaker, “prettier” birds…  No —> 
              a                     man will always  be  guilty of
               preying on   those around who are at less
           of an advantage. Black birds represent sin
         to us because of their eyes. For us,  eyes
        are the window to the soul, and when we
       see only black          pools in their
            depths,                      we                  
                                            are      +
                                                  +         \
                                                 __\        __\____    
                                                        .   .         \
                                                           \   -    a f  r   a    i     d    
                                                                                             we 
                                                                                              will 
                                                                                                     be 
                                                                                                     their 
                                                                                                     next 
                                                                                     p r   e    y.

 

 

 

By Rakuli on Tumblr.

Song of Upbringing

A poem by Chuya Nakahara

Translated from the Japanese by Christian Nagle

 

        I

          infancy

the snow that fell on me

was like floss silk

 

          childhood

the snow that fell on me

was like sleet

 

          seventeen to nineteen

the snow that fell on me

dropped like hail

 

          twenty to twenty-two

the snow that fell on me

seemed like balls of ice

 

          twenty-three

the snow that fell on me

looked like a blizzard

 

          twenty-four

the snow that fell on me

became so mournful



        II

the snow that falls on me

falls like petals

when the burning firewood makes a noise

and the frozen sky darkens

 

the snow that fell on me

so delicate and lovely

fell reaching out a hand

 

the snow that fell on me

was like tears

that sink into a burning forehead

 

to the snow that fell on me

I offered heartfelt thanks and prayed to God

that I would live a long life

 

the snow that fell on me

was so chaste

Psalm

Give me path, woman; tread you
make in vicious landings, over and
over with little-boy feet. Give me
the un-mother who swims like a carp
beneath your belly. Give me the trembling
wake of all epics bowing at the sight
of us.

Give me song, darling;
give me breech with a flood
of music. Mornings of hail, strong
coffee, addictions beaten and
moulded into the faces of
men we tried to love. Give me
violets pressed into reams
of tape.

Give me crow of lantern, talon
of witch. Give me that mess
in your kitchen, that chimney stack
leaning in the doorway, that
passage that goes everywhere
we want to be.

Give me adoration you wind
in sheaves for the father
you wanted and
never got.

Give me hips, naked salt of
bone, licking of temples. Give me
breast of couplet, unbound and heaving.
Give me red-letter holy, not the way
it is written but the way it is meant
to be lived.

I will take the granite with
the garden, if for nothing more
than contrast. I will take the skill of
fine motor, strings uncoiled and stretched
the length of a neck, small sacraments
I do not carve.

And for you I will not be one who
breaks easily. I will see better in
the shine you cast, when all movement
ceases and there is just you and
me and some emptiness we’ve yet
to conquer.

Give me the fill of knowing,
the tongue of futures.

Give me hair and wire and
spit to hold us
both together.

3.18.2013

image

Happy birthday again!

For you I’ve said it’s ok,

if you ate the last nectarine

in the ice-box again (like

WCW) but actually it wasn’t you,

and it wasn’t David W. Pritchard,

there were more in the crisper

which shows just what a shitty

house-wife I make.



Something reeks in the disposal

and outside, mere rain,

cyclone made out of actual fire,

my car got washed away

to turn up in a reservoir

all the way in Northeast Philly

where ivy makes the front walks

inconvenient and pretty.



So that’s why when you guys

came in I was sitting there silently

reading Alfred Starr Hamilton—

on account of my car being washed away—

and why, essentially, we went north

on foot.



To reiterate history, some guerilla

may slip into Wissahickon Park,

release his wendigos, and vanish.



Do you think that’s more or less

culturally relative? Or at all

appropriate to say?



The best beer I had that night

was a Baltic porter literally called

God Puts His Tired Hand in Our

Tired Hand. It resembled a nebula.



After that, $2 Joe Porter. I said to the guy,

I’ll take the $2 beer. He seemed unimpressed.

I’m getting into really malty ones,

I’m thinking, and full disclosure

about the nightmare of genealogy.

I’m also getting into figs and honey, that is,

eating them, also aspiring to the Land of Them,

and picking their seeds

from my teeth with a very long knife.

A Happy Death

you asked
for fire
dancing on the mountain
at first light
burning to dusk
you asked
to blaze
on holy heights
above trees and men
you asked
for a glorious life
retreating
into night

you asked
but you died
wired, tubed
flat on your back

“Distance and a certain light makes anything artistic— it doesn't matter what.”

—from “Distance and a Certain Light” by May Swensen

love poetry for the disillusioned

I’m not asking for much,
maybe a sunday night on the
couch,
the taking of pelham one two three
on the classic movie channel,
something on the stove,
pasta, steak,
I don’t know,
something easy

and maybe I’ll
even buy a lamp,
some light for
your hair to catch
as we sit,
time escaping,
sinking to a civil
and unexpected
place

“All that came before washed away in an instant when you smiled at me.”

Daily Haiku on Love by Tyler Knott Gregson

Coffee Spills

The coffee rings
Still linger on oak
Ridges that you forgot
To sand down with
Your teeth—
My paper still sticks to
Surface in clinging hope
That they’ll never lose
Meaning.
But I figure we already know
Everything you
Created fades with
Time.

unsaid

Tied tin-can telephone across the North Atlantic

words tangled up somewhere between

hanging like clothespins over a churning sea

written for you, written for me.

And I could kick my end of this tightrope of ours

send that homegrown prose to its waterlogged grave

weeds to be poisoned, not a paper to save.

Wander-mind musings, terrify me

and tremble, hands, give me a fright

I want to see what it’s like dive through the night

for the confessions I’m too senseless to read

and the ones I could never let you see.

The Hyperboreans

You stand on the shore at dusk,
watching the sun abdicate:

It flirts with the horizon,
enlightening it with its kiss
setting it afire with its touch.

Only for a second you see
a strange gleam, a wink
beyond the infinite expanse of sea.

You see it as if you were there,
though you are forever removed from it,
separated by life and a sea of self.

It seems to be a land, a kingdom
you see held out by heavens hand,
through time and space and self.

You can see it clearly through forever
and you move like Zeno towards it
until you forget where you are going

and drown in the sea of self,
of things, of time and gain and angst
and faith and apostasy and apathy.

And one day, after numberless forevers,
you wash up upon an unknown shore,
without a name or memory of home.

I’ve been writing you poems for five years
and they all sound the same.
There is so much inside of me
for you,
so many things I’ve been trying to tell you
if only my words weren’t all used up,
if only you would listen.

If only you would listen.

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